Web Development & Hosting

June 22, 2018

There are a lot of free web hosting services. Some of them are ad supported, other provide basic resource and require you to upgrade to a paid service at certain levels of server load. All of them share the same basic concepts you will need to know.

Disk space

A certain amount of disk space will be given. Unless your website is geared towards the use of large files and images, you will never have to worry about exceeding your disk space allotment.

Bandwitdh

Bandwitdh is used every time a visitor to your site loads a page and/or an image. This is usually where the free hosting services impose their limits. If your website grows, your bandwidth usage will increase in proportion. Once you hit your bandwidth limit, the host will most likely temporarily shutdown the site until the next month or you upgrade the package.

FTP

FTP, an acronym for File Transfer Protocol is how you transfer files to and from your website. Using an FTP client you can connect to your FTP server using your account and upload your files. Alternatively your hosting account panel should also have a method of uploading files using a web browser.

Website creators

For those that don’t want to or can’t create their own websites, a lot of hosts come with free website creators. Choose a template, enter some content and the website is created for you. These templates tend to be standard with the premium templates available at a price.

Email

Every hosting account free or paid comes with its own email addresses. These can be mailboxes on the server with your account name or they can be forwarders. A Forwarder sends any mail to that address to another email address of your choosing.

August 14, 2017

Marketers often have limited budgets and resources and need to decide where that money goes. The two most common options are to optimize the site and increase conversions or optimizing traffic and bring higher quality traffic. If you can’t afford to do both, which way do you go?

Of course, we know that there is no “one size fits all” answer for everyone. Every business unique, even those operating in the same category.

Site optimization is also known as Conversion rate optimization and is the process of making changes to your website and measuring the corresponding conversion rate. The changes are not blind, and you should base them on an understanding of the average user. The typical changes involve design, flow, navigation, and content.

Traffic optimization is tweaking ad campaigns with the goal of eliminating wasted ad spend to decrease the cost per conversion. For example, a 20% reduction in low-quality clicks can reduce the cost per conversion by as much as 40%.

So which is it? Looking at real-world tests run by various marketing firms, the answer is: it depends. If you are confident that your ad campaign is optimized and only high-quality traffic gets to your site, then using CRO should see massive returns. However, there is no point optimizing a site if the majority of your traffic is of poor quality and would not convert anyway.

March 3, 2017

There are two types of websites: static and dynamic. Static websites do not change, and the best example is the typical corporate website. The website is mostly text and images with a contact form.
Dyna
mic sites are like applications; examples would be sites like Facebook, Gmail. Anything that generates something different based on user input. These dynamic websites run on a scripting language which fetches data from a database and displays it to the user. Here are the most popular server-side languages used today:

PHP

PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language that at the time of writing is used by three-quarters of websites running today. PHP is open source which is the primary reason for its popularity. There is a huge online community that supports and helps continue development. PHP is mostly used by smaller websites, but the largest footprint is from WordPress sites.

Java

PHP runs mostly smaller lower-traffic websites. On the other end of the spectrum, there is Java, which runs most of the high-traffic, high-performance sites. The two most notable examples of Java use for large scale websites would be Apple and Amazon, which both use Java web frameworks.

Python

Python is not as popular as PHP and Java but also runs some popular websites like Yahoo Maps, Shopzilla, and even the National Weather Service. It is a high-level language, which is meant to produce code is that more readable. This is possible thanks to a larger library of pre-existing functions that programmers can use for development.

December 3, 2016

Another user interface paradigm that has grown thanks to smartphones and faster connections are rich animations. It makes the experience more interactive and entertaining while providing functional feedback to the user. The animations need to be placed carefully so that it enhances rather than takes away from the user experience. Animation on websites can be classified in two ways:

Large animation

Unlike small-scale animation described below, these are used for interaction purposes. A basic example would be a hidden menu which appears with a large page shift animation. Another would be where content changes when the mouse cursor hovers over a selection. While not exactly an animation, even the usage of slideshows and galleries to show multiple sets of photographs falls into the large animation category. The most striking example is the background animation. PayPal uses this to good effect.

Small scale animation

These are small animations in size and are used to convey an action of some sort. An example would the loading animation. Depending on how it is used, this can be a progress bar, a spinner. Another example would be motion animation where a product or service is shown in motion on the website. Look carefully the next time you browse and you will a lot of examples of small-scale animation usage.

Most other animation techniques actually use a combination of the two to both lead up to and enhance the larger animation.

May 15, 2016

It is a very good idea to use images in web design and in content. Images can convey an emotion or a statement far faster than any text could. Images in design such as headers, backgrounds can lend a sense of polish to the design. When it comes to images within content It can also set the reader up with what to expect within the article itself. However, not all images are equal and the better the images used, the better the outcome.

Whenever you look for an image to use, look for images that have been taking with the rule of thirds in mind. A lot of professional photographers use the rule of thirds when taking pictures. A good description of the rule of thirds would be: “an image should be imagined as divided into nine equal parts by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines, and that important compositional elements should be placed along these lines or their intersections.”

If you were to compare two images. One taken with the rule of thirds in mind and one without, you will be able to tell which one is better almost immediately. The right images, can make the difference between a good design and a great design. Take as much care as you would in choosing the image, as you would in any other element of the website. Look at any website or page that you can think looks exceptional, chances are that it will have exception images too.

March 2, 2016

Every blogger and webmaster online wants more and more backlinks. Backlinks are still the primary driver of search engine rankings, and it does not look like that will change for sometime. However Google looks at more than just the number of links pointing a web page. The quality of those links matter. The quality of those links influences how much value those links pass. Just getting backlinks is not enough, you need quality backlinks. Here are three ways to evaluate the quality of a link:

Number of links on page

If the page from which you get the link contains hundreds of links then the quality of that link is questionable. The fewer the links on a page the better. In addition pages with a lot of links could be considered spammy and may get penalized

Page with penalty

This leads to the next point, which is that getting links from spammy or penalized pages cant hurt you. Google publicly played this down for several years, even though seo experts insisted that it was the case. With the release of Penguin and the disavow tool, it was confirmed.

Number of links to the page

The number and quality of links point to the page that linked to yours is also an indicator of link quality. The more links that point to page, the more authority that it can pass down to your link.

Look through your backlink profile and check the pages listed against some of these. Identify any bad links and then you can use the disavow tool to get them removed from your link profile.

September 8, 2015

Every company these days needs a website. Not having one would be like lacking an actual store 20 years ago. You’ll be invisible to a large percentage of your market if you don’t have any online real estate. That being said, most companies these days need a lot more too. They also need specific hosting solutions that will give their company the best reach possible so they can connect with as many customers as possible.

While there’s nothing new about Los Angeles web hosting, you may not know a lot about LA colocation. This is a type of hosting where you’re allowed to customize the solution as much as possible, but aren’t stuck with any kind of one size fits all version. In fact, the infrastructure is little more than a skeleton of hardware you can then add your own personal touches too.

The end result is exactly what you make of it, but what most companies in Los Angeles love is that it’s so scalable. This also means it’s extremely easy on your budget too. Spend only as much as it takes to get the finished result your company needs to succeed. You can also add or take away from it over time.

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When your company is ready for better results on the World Wide Web, then they’re ready to invest in Los Angeles colocation. While you don’t lack for options, you’ll most likely be happiest when you rely on the expertise of Rack Alley for your needs.